Ellery Queen's Japanese Golden Dozen. Ellery Queen
there, in the box, should prove I didn't kill him. They said I misread Inoki for Ueki. But, hell—now, would somebody who'd murdered to get those notes back fail to check the names on them? The police said it was dark. But I'm supposed to have burned five notes in the playground a little later. This means I had matches, right? I could've checked the names when I struck a match. Anyway, my prints weren't found on the cashbox."
"Well. Anything else?"
"Yes. It's important, too. How about this—does the hunk of wood used as the murder weapon match the wound on Yamagishi's head?"
"How d'you mean?"
"Listen, I read the medical report. A copy, that is. There was a flattened spot on the back of Yamagishi's skull, maybe the size of a human palm. The bone was dented in. The log the detectives made me select was triangular, Mr. Harajima—in cross-section, I mean—about four centimeters wide on a side." Ueki shook his head. "I just don't think three smacks would leave something like that. I mean, the fractures would've been uneven. He must've been hit with something larger, once." He blinked. "Naturally, it's only my guess. But, still, you might check it."
Ueki had been speaking quietly, but with an undercurrent of hope.
Harajima took a taxi home from the detention house. On the way, he thought over what Ueki had said, and could not help becoming excited. Finally, he concluded Ueki's words had considerable significance.
Back at the office, he read the case record over with a different eye. He saw that when the viewpoint alters, so does the impression one gets from the materials. Other possibilities hadn't been investigated. Ueki had confessed, immediately upon arrest. The police had relaxed and consequently were careless about making certain of their evidence. Happy over success, they'd been lax in their very first investigations.
Harajima questioned some ten customers of Yamagishi's about the cushions. He learned that the moneylender never provided them with one when they were at his house. From the young teacher upstairs, however, he found that Yamagishi did, indeed, give courteous hospitality to those who visited on other than business. He seemed to enjoy sitting and chatting. Other associates of Yamagishi attested to this.
The police had considered it only common sense to assume Yamagishi brought out cushions for customers. They required the suspect admit doing this—returning the cushion to the pile after the murder—to suggest the act had been committed by a thief.
Next, Harajima took the coroners' report to a friend who was a doctor of forensic medicine, and asked his opinion.
"It's supposition, remember," the doctor said. "But to make a wound of the kind that killed Yamagishi would require a single blow with a weapon more than eight centimeters wide." Shaking his head, he said, "It's odd the police don't see this. But, of course, they place more importance on their own intuition and experience than on what we say. They think our reports little more than reference material." He made a clucking sound with his tongue. "They actually look down on us doctors," he said, smiling quickly.
It would seem that one of the detectives had simply decided the murder weapon should be a split log, lacking anything else suitable. The excitement of conducting an investigation immediately after Ueki confessed probably accounted for much of the laxity. It was different from times when a criminal left so much evidence behind that it confused the police with its very abundance. Nothing was as open to error or powerful prejudice as the educated hunch of an over-confident detective.
Harajima had some notes about this, right on his desk, taken from Ascertaining the Facts, by the Judicial Research and Training Institute. It was interesting, and a parallel: "There have been many cases in which police officers, operating on the basis of a preformed notion, have failed to take into consideration facts that remove suspicions and have used undue methods to force confessions. Almost all judges with long experience have encountered one or two such incidents. Written works on criminal matters often refer to cases of the kind. For instance, mention is made of police officers who carelessly and hastily overlook facts that prove innocence. In addition, there are remarks to the effect that there is much falsehood in confessions made before police."
Harajima became enthusiastic. This very case might just be a stroke of good luck. In court, he called the forensic medical expert to give an opinion about the wound. As new witnesses, he summoned several persons who had associations with Jin Yamagishi. He questioned the four police officers who had interrogated Ueki. They all testified that the confession had been given willingly.
— Did you tell the defendant, Mr. Ueki, "We know you killed Yamagishi. You won't get off now. But, if you confess, we'll let you free and get the public prosecutor to drop the case"?
— Witness A: Listen, I never said anything like that.
— In order to prompt a confession, did you allow the defendant to smoke as much as he ITked in the interrogation room? And after the confession, did you order food for him on three occasions?
— Witness B: It's customary to allow a defendant two or three cigarettes during questioning. This isn't to "prompt a confession." We ordered food once.
— During questioning, did you instruct the defendant with hints about having to put the cushions back in the original place?
— Witness C: No. He told us that, offered it on his own.—Did you suggest the firewood, exhibit one, as the murder weapon? And, did you lead the defendant to select the log shown here—and to say he struck the victim on the back of the head with it, three times?
— Witness D: Of course not. He confessed all that himself. He chose that piece of wood himself. He said, "This is it," or something, and swung it around. Then he said, "No mistake about it." He was very cooperative.
Ueki was quite disturbed, indignant, about the testimony of these men during cross-questioning.
"See? They said what I told you. How the devil can they lie like that? Just to make themselves look good. They don't give a damn about who's guilty."
There was a deadlock. The police officers strongly denied
Ueki's accusations.
Three months later, the verdict was handed down. Not guilty, for lack of sufficient evidence.
The verdict was reached for the following reasons:
1. The piece of wood presented to the court as the murder weapon is four centimeters wide at the broadest point. According to testimonies of the autopsy doctor and one other, flattening of the victim's skull would require a weapon at least as wide as an adult palm, eight or nine centimeters. (A report by an expert from a large medical university confirmed this.) Therefore, the pine log offered as evidence cannot have been the murder weapon.
2. Fingerprints of the defendant were not found on the piece of pine log, nor on the cashbox belonging to Jin Yamagishi.
3. According to the confession, the defendant took five of the twenty-two promissory notes from the cashbox. He took these to the playground of a life-insurance company some two hundred meters from the irrigation pond and burned them. Among notes left in the box were those in the name of the defendant, Torao Ueki. It was assumed, after investigation, that the five notes burned had been in the name of Tomio lnoki. The judicial police insist that, in the dark, the defendant must have misread the name Tomio Inoki as his own, Torao Ueki.
This seems likely, but the defense attorney's insistence is also convincing: if the defendant is in fact the murderer, then recovery of the notes would have been his primary concern. He would have made certain he had the right ones.
4. Examination of the written confessions reveals no trace of coercion or undue detention by the judicial police to force the defendant to confess. However, there is an impression that deception and leading questions were employed. The series of depositions submitted by the defendant to this court strongly claim such methods were used. This is not enough to convince the court that the crime was not committed by the defendant. The defendant is unable to account convincingly for his actions and whereabouts for the hour from the time he left the Manpaiso mahjong parlor to the time when he returned. There is doubt because Yoshiya Nakamura testifies to having seen the defendant